Media and crisis management is the most visible side of PR. But most of WHAM’s work involves sustained behind-the-scenes work, helping our clients communicate effectively with their customers, staff and other stakeholders. More…

12 May 2010

Brockie's passion counter-productive

DomPost science columnist Bob Brockie writes a great column. He sieves through a
mountain of potential material to provide readers with intriguing items written
with a wry wit.

Except, that
is, when he selects a topic that involves the denizens of the anti-science
underworld. The arguments and practices of homeopaths, antifluoride campaigners
and those opposed to the use of 1080 are skewered on the nib of Brockie's
contemptuous pen.

It's easy to understand where he's
coming from. There's a gross editorial imbalance in the mass and women's media
in the way environmental, food production and health issues are treated.

In the minds of many reporters, the
virtues of organic food, homeopathy, bach flower therapy and Greenpeace are self-evident. The evils of conventional medicine, dairy farming, mining,
chemicals, and meat eating equally so.

Brockie is justified in trying to redress
this failure of reason. But his full frontal attacks on people's dearly held beliefs -
however irrational - are hardly likely to win hearts and minds. Just how did he
expect anti-1080 campaigners to respond when he described them as,
"ill-informed, hand-wringing, paranoid chemo-phobes, fear-mongers and
eco-freaks"?

This week the anti-fluoride lobby took its turn at being impaled. But what Brockie neglected to say in his column is that the
persistence of the opposition to fluoridation may well be due to the tactics of
pro-fluoride lobbyists, including much of the medico-scientific establishment,
in years gone by.

In the decades following World War
2, pro-fluoride lobbyists rode roughshod over those who were worried about the
ethics of mass medication using the water supply and those who had legitimate
concerns about the adequacy of the research justifying fluoridation.

Opponents, regardless of their
scientific credentials (and many were either research scientists or
physicians), were labelled as cranks and crackpots.In the United
States,images like the right-wing lunatic General Jack D. Ripper in
"Dr Strangelove," were used to discredit the very idea of opposition
to fluoridation.

Those scientists who did openly
oppose fluoridation were often subjected to personal attacks and professional
reprisals.For decades, mainstream scientific journals would reject for
publication any paper that did not articulate a strictly pro-fluoridation
position on risk and benefit questions.

These tactics were seriously
counterproductive. By refusing to debate the scientific issues, proponents
substituted dogmatism for open-mindedness and weakened their own scientific
credibility. Their scorched-earth attacks on their opponents further polarised
the debate, redoubled the determination of the antis, and made them appear to
be the underdogs.

Sixty years after it began, the
fluoridation debate persists largely unchanged. Despite half a century of
official approval and promotion, only about 60 percent of American public water
supplies are fluoridated. In New Zealand, most of the larger cities, except
Christchurch, are fluoridated whereas many smaller communities - including most
of the South Island - are not.

When local health officials propose
fluoridation, grass-roots opposition almost always crops up. Risk concerns,
much like those raised 50 years ago, are still raised today, but the science
backing up those concerns is now accessible on the internet.

The lesson for Brockie and others
in the scientific community is that controversial public issues must be
addressed in ways that allows for two-way dialogue with concerned members of
the public. Excoriating critics for their irrational beliefs gets you nowhere.

While science and biotechnology
advocates may feel the urge to sweep aside risk issues and crush their critics
with propaganda and ad hominem attacks, all that approach really accomplished
for the pro-fluoridation movement was to create an entrenched, undying
opposition.

A good topic for a
future Brockie column might be the science of why people in wealthy societies
respond to perceived risk in the way they do.

Sources: The Dominion Post,
Consumers Union

For more information about how
three controversial public issues - fluoridation, nuclear energy and pesticide
use - were mishandled by the business and scientific communities, click here.